It has been fourteen months since Kosovo formally declared independence and ten
years since Serbia lost de-facto sovereignty over Kosovo. Fifty-eight states,
including the U.S. and most of Europe, have recognized this reality.

Serbia continues in denial.

Denial is a much-practiced psychological trait in Serbia. Even after video
footage of atrocities by Serbian forces in Srebrenica emerged, taken by Serbian
soldiers, the nationalist line in Serbia is that nothing happened there. Ratko
Mladic is nowhere to be found. Slobodan Milosevic was an aberration from outer
space, although he was popularly elected on a platform comprising little more
than ethnic hatred and racism. The first reaction to the website for my musical: “You
Took Away My Flag: a Musical About Kosovo,” www.youtookawaymyflag.com
, which refers to Kosovo as an independent state, was from a Serb who said, “there
are mistakes on your website: Kosovo is part of south Serbia.”

In its present condition, Serbia will sabotage Europe if is admitted to the
EU. It will have a new forum and new leverage to sabotage Europe’s commitment
to new realities in the Balkans.

Moving away from a national policy of denial is something that the citizens
of Serbia must sort out themselves. They must repudiate the racist impulse
that caused a senior Serbian leader to say to another diplomat during the final-status
negotiations, “I’ve known the Albanians all my life. They are incapable
of conceptual thought.” Europe does not help them do that by turning
the other cheek, by bearing carrots but no sticks, by offering an autobahn
to EU membership with no traffic rules.

Serbia has many heroes, historically and today. The heroes of today are not
the revanchist nationalists, but the lonely voices of accommodation, westernization,
and Europeanization, who too frequently get beat up for speaking truth. The
heroes of today are politicians, like Cedomir Jovanovic, Sladjan Ilic, and
Boris Tadic, whose hearts are in Europe and Christianity but who are made fearful
by the thuggery that burns U.S. and British Embassies, trashes McDonalds, and
throws grenades at EULEX. Europe should strengthen the hand of the reformers
by making it clear that Serbia’s path forward is conditioned on its embrace
of European values.

The threat that Serbia poses to Europe and Serbia’s capacity to move
into the 21st Century are complicated by European dissenters over Kosovo’s
independence. They, also, are sabotaging Europe now by failing to embrace the
majority European view over Kosovo. How can a Serbian political leader be more
moderate on Kosovo than the Foreign Minister of Spain?

These dissenters are doing Russia's work. Russia wants an EU incapable of
meaningful action on security issues. It wants a mess in corners of Europe
where its imperial power, expressed now through Russian energy and telecommunications
corporations, can extend Russia’s imperial reach far more effectively
and subtly than the Red Army or the Czar’s forces ever could. These new
imperial agents come with a checkbook instead of with an infantry division
backed up by artillery.

It's not like the opposition to Kosovo's independence is principled. It is
not. It is a futile and ridiculous exercise of symbolism, based on a palpably
false factual premise: that Kosovo can be anything other than independent.
Serbia has never explained how it could reassert control over Kosovo. Nor has
any of its apologists in Europe. Serbia never came up with remotely credible
alternatives to independence under Ahtisaari plan. During the Ahtissari and
Troika negotiations, it offered even less than Kosovo had in 1989 before Milosevic
took it away. What do the European dissenters and Russian imperialists and
Serbian racists propose now, after Kosovo has enjoyed independence for more
than a year? How, exactly, would the dissenters take away Kosovo’s independence?

So, given the irrationality of dissent over Kosovo’s independence, why
do the dissenters dissent? They hope to curry favor with domestic political
forces that exaggerate fears of Kosovo’s precedent for domestic separatism.
That is easier than providing real leadership. Solana weakens his office by
mirroring Spain’s policy instead of energetically advancing Europe’s.
He gives aid and comfort to the Spanish politicians who cynically promote their
non-recognition of Kosovo. The idea of Kosovo as a precedent for separatist
groups around the world is nonsense. If ever there were a unique situation,
it is Kosovo. A province, of a state, constitutionally autonomous, and long
opposed to incorporation, was rescued from its occupation by a NATO bombing
campaign, and a UN Security Council resolution. How likely is that to happen
again?

What the dissenters and the Serbian nationalists say is mere rhetoric, not
policy. But if the international community lost its senses and followed their
lead, the result would be a war—a war which would sabotage Europe's future,
proving through blood that Europe is incapable of solving obvious problems
peacefully, and, worse, unlike the early days of Yugoslavia’s breakup,
it would prove that Europe is incapable of keeping its own commitments.

No reasonable person will follow their lead. But the only result of silent
patience with their assault on reality is to muddy the waters and prevent success
of EULEX and the Ahtisaari plan. The result will be an enhancement of Russian
control over Europe's future through energy blackmail.

The worst possible policy would be to ignore these realities and rush to admit
unrepentant Serbia to the EU. Serbia’s admission to the EU should be
conditioned explicitly on its unequivocal recognition of Kosovo’s independence.

At best it would besmirch Europe’s commitment to human rights and enlarge
opportunities for politicians who use racism to advance themselves. It would
throw a monkey wrench into Europe’s manifest commitment to EULEX.

At worst it would embrace the worst features of Serbia’s past instead
of its potential for the future.

Let Kosovo be. Keep Serbia out of the EU until it acknowledges the reality
of Kosovo’s independence. Tell the European dissenters to keep their
commitments to European unity.

Professor Perritt is the author of Kosovo Liberation Army: the Inside Story
of an Insurgency, published last year by the University of Illinois Press,
and The Road to Independence for Kosovo A Chronicle of the Ahtisaari Plan,
scheduled to be published later this year by Cambridge University Press. He
also has written a musical, You Took Away My Flag: a Musical about Kosovo,
scheduled to open in Chicago on 12 June. See www.youtookawaymyflag.com.